Greek Church Leads Hateful, Twisted Campaign Against Gay Marriage

— Greece’s Orthodox Church is using ludicrous out-dated arguments like claiming homosexuality is a mental illness or that baptisms could turn kids gay if their parents are LGBTQ+.

by Demetrios Ioannou

Greece is expected to legalize same-sex weddings this week, in a vote due to be held the day after Valentine’s Day. Not everyone is feeling the love, however, and the Greek Orthodox church has become an outspoken and powerful opponent of the changes.

Even though the bill isn’t forcing the priests to marry gay people and has nothing to do with the church, it is church officials who have been the loudest opponents, with bishops appearing on television programs making outdated and false accusations, calling homosexuality a mental illness and suggesting that gay men and women are sick and only the church can heal them.

When the bill passes, Greece will be the first Christian Orthodox country with strong roots in religion to allow same-sex marriage.

Ultra-orthodox and far-right groups protested in central Athens on Sunday against the bill. Among them were many who were holding Greek flags, icons with Jesus and the Virgin Mary, and of course members of the clergy. “Fatherland, Religion, Family,” was one of their slogans.

“Ever since psychiatry removed homosexuality from the list of mental disorders, it gave up on related research and these unfortunate people were left helpless with only solace the hope of a convenient legislation and the assertion of rights with parades of self-deprecation and shame,” said Nikolaos, the Metropolitan of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki, during a meeting of the Greek church’s Holy Synod in late January. These words angered many Greeks who took to social media to express their disapproval and even forced the Hellenic Psychiatric Association to release a statement clarifying that “homosexuality is not a mental illness”.

According to the Greek church, homosexuality is a sin and “of course the traditional family is in danger. A homosexual relationship can neither be a family nor a marriage,” Panteleimon, the Metropolitan of Maroneia and Komotini, the spokesperson of the Holy Synod, said to The Daily Beast, and continued: “The church only recognizes as marriage the relationship between a man and a woman, whose relationship is sanctified through the holy mystery of marriage.”

“I didn’t expect anything different from the church,” said Stella Belia, who was among a group of independent consultants who worked on the national strategy for the equality of LGBTQ+ people, which is being implemented by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in accordance with a European Commission initiative.

She told The Daily Beast that she has been “out and proud” since she was in high school, but is also a deeply religious person.

Despite being abandoned by her church, Belia has made huge progress as the president of Rainbow Families Greece, an NGO focusing on LGBTQ+ parents and their families.

While there are politicians who also oppose the bill, it is expected to pass with the majority of the parliamentary votes. Although Greece has recognized a cohabitation agreement, as an alternative to marriage for same-sex couples since 2015, this addition to the civil wedding bill will also acknowledge the children of those couples who have not been officially considered a family and don’t enjoy the same rights as straight families. However, the right to medically assisted reproduction and surrogacy will still not be extended to same-sex couples.

“It is very important for many [gay] families who have been feeling insecure, like families where the one member who is the legal parent is a person whose life is in danger. Those families will finally be able to have a shared parenting role,” said Belia, who is the biological mother of two 16-year-old boys, Giannis and Antonis, and looks after the three children of an ex-partner.

When her partner’s son Christos, had an accident with a motorcycle on July 6, 2022, he was hospitalized in the ICU for over a month. “He was under sedation and we didn’t know if he would live or die. And I was outside that ICU, inside was my child and I was nobody [to him according to the hospital rules],” she said, describing the difficulties many same-sex families in Greece face. According to current law, if the legal parent in a same-sex family dies, the child will most possibly end up in foster care. The partner does not have any rights associated with the child and cannot have custody.

This bill is currently in parliament and will be brought to a vote on Feb. 15. The church must then decide how to respond to the new law within religious settings. Though it is not an official decision yet, and the Greek Archbishop Ieronymos has been trying to push a more neutral stance for now, other members of the clergy have suggested that they will refuse to christen the children of gay couples, with Seraphim, the Metropolitan of Piraeus, saying on Greek network SKAI that: “If we baptize the children of gay couples, the children will become gay too.”

“I joke sometimes about this with my sons,” said Belia who had her children through IVF. “My boys tell me, ‘Mom do you still love us the same now that we are straight?’”

At the moment the Greek church has been waiting for the government’s next move and at the next meeting of the Holy Synod will decide how they will proceed. “True love has a cost; it has a sacrifice. The message of the church is clear; the church accepts everyone in repentance,” Panteleimon said. Belia replied: “None of them will deprive me of my faith. And this has nothing to do with me rejecting the church, it has to do with the church not wanting me in its bosom. I will not force myself to go where they do not want me”.

All this comes only months after the country had its first ever gay party leader. The newly elected leader of the main opposition party in the Greek parliament, Stefanos Kasselakis of SYRIZA, is a gay man who recently married his husband in New York. Same-sex marriage has been on Kasselakis’ agenda as well since day one and this has been one of the few things Greece’s main political parties agree on.

Mitsotakis said in a recent interview on national television ERT that the church could not stop the democratic will. “I absolutely respect our fellow citizens who have a different point of view, just as I respect the church’s point of view. We will respect the different opinion, but the state legislates; it does not co-legislate with the church,” he said.

The bill will finally give visibility to a large number of people in Greece and mostly their children. “All these years we have been fighting for the obvious,” Belia said.

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Pope Francis: To be ‘scandalized’ by gay couple blessings is ‘hypocrisy’

Pope Francis greets pilgrims at his general audience on Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2024, at the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican.

By Matthew Santucci

Pope Francis this week again defended the Vatican’s controversial document authorizing blessings for same-sex couples, with the Holy Father arguing that humans “must all respect each other” and stating that blessings should be extended to “everyone.”

The pope’s comments come from an exclusive Italian-language interview he gave to the Italian weekly print periodical Credere, which will be available in newsstands across Italy on Thursday.

When asked by editor Father Vincenzo Vitale about Fiducia Supplicans — the December document published by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) that authorized nonliturgical blessings for same-sex couples and others in “irregular situations” — the pope said that “the gravest sins … are those that disguise themselves with a more ‘angelic’ appearance.”

“No one is scandalized if I give a blessing to an entrepreneur who perhaps exploits people: and this is a very serious sin,” the Holy Father said. “Whereas they are scandalized if I give it to a homosexual … This is hypocrisy! We must all respect each other. Everyone.”

“I don’t bless a ‘homosexual marriage,’” the pope said. “I bless two people who love each other and I also ask them to pray for me.”

“Always in confessions, when these situations arrive, homosexual people, remarried people, I always pray and bless,” he continued. “The blessing is not to be denied to anyone. Everyone, everyone. Mind you, I am talking about people: those who are capable of receiving baptism,” Francis continued.

Pope Francis has come to the defense of the document several times since its publication. In a Jan. 26 audience with members of the DDF, the pope said that “moral perfection” isn’t a requirement for receiving a blessing.

The intent of the blessings, the pope said at the time, is “to concretely show the closeness of the Lord and of the Church to all those who, finding themselves in different situations, ask help to carry on — sometimes to begin — a journey of faith.”

Those comments came after the 87-year-old pontiff appeared on the Italian prime-time TV talk show “Che Tempo Che Fa” on Jan. 14, which he joined via livestream from his residence at Casa Santa Marta.

Answering questions regarding Fiducia Supplicans, the pope said that “the Lord blesses everyone who is capable of being baptized, that is, every person.”

“But we are to take them by the hand and help them go down that road, not condemn them from the beginning,” he told the network. “And this is the pastoral work of the Church. This is very important work for confessors.”

The pope’s comments at Credere come amid continuing controversy over Fiducia Supplicans, which has been met with widespread criticism and concern centered on how it might be misconstrued. Backlash has come particularly from Church leaders in Africa and Eastern Europe.

Credere, which is part of the San Paolo Editorial Group and available only in print, was established on the occasion of the election of Pope Francis in 2013.

It is distributed throughout Italy with a weekly circulation of 60,000 copies and 200,000 readers, the Italian daily newspaper La Stampa reported.

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New leader of LGBTQ+ Catholic group seeks to help the queer faithful find a welcoming home

Michael O’Loughlin is the new executive director of Outreach, which highlights welcoming spaces within the church while working to create more.

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Many LGBTQ+ Catholics have a fraught relationship with the church, given its teachings against same-sex relationships and gender transition. Some leave for another faith or none at all, but some stay and try to make Catholicism work for them. As the new executive director of the LGBTQ+ Catholic ministry Outreach, Michael O’Loughlin’s goal is to help those who stay find welcoming spaces — and to create more of those.

“There can be room” for out, self-accepting LGBTQ+ people in the church, says O’Loughlin, a gay man who has worked as a journalist for The Advocate, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and numerous other publications.

He was most recently national correspondent for America, a magazine affiliated with the Jesuits, a Catholic religious order noted for scholarship and a commitment to social justice, and Outreach is an official Jesuit ministry. Founded two years ago by Rev. James Martin, a priest noted for his LGBTQ+ allyship, Outreach is a resource for LGBTQ+ Catholics, publishes a news and analysis website, and holds an annual conference. O’Loughlin is its first executive director, and Martin will continue to provide leadership in his role as founder.

O’Loughlin has spent the past few years promoting his book Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear, about Catholics who stepped up to serve those affected by the epidemic even as the church sometimes turned away. In talking about the book, he encountered many LGBTQ+ people who longed for a welcoming space within the Catholic Church. He was attracted to Outreach because it’s creating those spaces, he says.

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He was brought up Catholic and struggled at times to make sense of being both Catholic and gay. “Early on, I was confronted with the idea that I had to choose to live as a gay person or choose to practice my faith,” he says. In the end, though, he decided “you don’t have to choose one or the other.”

He realizes that not everyone can do what he did. “It’s fairly obvious that the church has been damaging to LGBTQ people throughout history,” he says, and notes that it’s understandable that some would leave. But with Outreach, he seeks to highlight the stories of those who’ve stayed in the faith and are not only feeling affirmed there but also providing important services to the church — teaching, serving as music directors, working in food pantries and homeless shelters, and more. They’re “living the gospel,” he says.

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The ministry, he says, won’t shy away from the challenges facing LGBTQ+ Catholics; he acknowledges that some LGBTQ+ people have been fired by church-affiliated entities simply because of their identity, but he notes that there has been pushback against such discrimination, especially by the Jesuits. However, many LGBTQ+ Catholics are finding those welcoming spaces he talks about, he says, and Outreach can help parishes understand how to be more welcoming.

He has worked alongside Martin, editor at large for America, for several years. “What I admire about Jim’s work is he’s able to advocate for greater inclusivity while working within the framework of the church,” O’Loughlin says. “He’s been very successful in bringing people together.” Martin is the author of several books, including Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter Into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity.

“Everyone at Outreach is overjoyed,” Martin said in a press release announcing O’Loughlin’s appointment. “With his years of journalistic experience, his theological background, two books to his credit, and his deep knowledge of the LGBTQ community, I can think of absolutely no one better suited for this job. This is the perfect job for Mike, and Mike is the perfect person for this job.”

Outreach is not a competitor to other LGBTQ+ Catholic groups, such as DignityUSA and New Ways Ministry, both of which have a mission of advocating for LGBTQ+ equality within the church, O’Loughlin says. “There is room for all these different groups to work together,” he says.

Asked about potential changes to church doctrine, he says he can’t predict what the future will hold. Ten years ago, he wouldn’t have expected that any pope would approve blessings for same-sex couples, although Pope Francis has since said the blessings are not for the relationship but for the individuals in it. Still, he says, “I’m encouraged that Pope Francis continues to make space with these conversations.” So he’ll stay hopeful about what the next 10 years might bring.

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Jesuits in US Bolster Outreach Initiative Aimed at Encouraging LGBTQ+ Catholics

— Catholic dogma continues to repudiate same-sex marriage and gender transition

In this photo provided by America Media, from left, the Rev. James Martin, Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, N.M., and Rev. Eric Andrews attend the closing Mass for the Outreach conference at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, in New York, June 18, 2023. Martin is the founder of Outreach, a unique Jesuit-run program of outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics.

By Associated Press

Even as Catholic dogma continues to repudiate same-sex marriage and gender transition, one of the most prominent religious orders in the United States — the Jesuits — is strengthening a unique outreach program for LGBTQ+ Catholics.

The initiative — fittingly called Outreach — was founded two years ago by the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit who is one of the country’s most prominent advocates for greater LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Catholic Church.

Outreach, a ministry of the Jesuit magazine America, sponsored conferences in New York City in 2022 and 2023, and last year launched a multifaceted website with news, essays and information about Catholic LGBTQ+ resources and events.

On Tuesday, there was another milestone for Outreach — the appointment of journalist and author Michael O’Loughlin as its first executive director.

O’Loughlin, a former staff writer at online newspaper Crux, has been the national correspondent at America. He is the author of a book recounting the varied ways that Catholics in the U.S. responded to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and ‘90s — “Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear.”

O’Loughlin told The Associated Press he’s excited by his new job, viewing it as a chance to expand the range of Outreach’s programs and the national scope of its community.

“It’s an opportunity to highlight the ways LGBT people can be Catholic and active in parishes, ministries and charities,” he said. “There’s a lot of fear about to being too public about it. … I want them to realize they’re not alone.”

O’Loughlin says his current outlook evolved as he traveled to scores of places around the U.S. to promote his book, talking to groups of LGBTQ+ Catholics, and their families and friends, about how to make the church more welcoming to them.

Those conversations made O’Loughlin increasingly comfortable publicly identifying as a gay Catholic after years of wondering whether he should remain in the church. Its doctrine still condemns any sexual relations between gay or lesbian partners as “intrinsically disordered.”

The latest expansion of Outreach occurs amid a time of division within the global Catholic Church as it grapples with LGBTQ+ issues.

Pope Francis, a Jesuit who has met with Martin and sent letters of support to Outreach, has made clear he favors a more welcoming approach to LGBTQ+ people. At his direction, the Vatican recently gave priests greater leeway to bless same-sex couples and asserted that transgender people, in some circumstances, can be baptized.

However, there has been some resistance to the pope’s approach. Many conservative bishops in Africa, Europe and elsewhere said they would not implement the new policy regarding blessings. In the U.S., some bishops have issued directives effectively ordering diocesan personnel not to recognize transgender people’s gender identity.

Amid those conflicting developments, Martin and other Jesuit leaders are proud of Outreach’s accomplishments and optimistic about its future.

“There seems to be deep hunger for the kind of ministry that we’re doing, not only among LGBTQ Catholics, but also their families and friends,” Martin said by email from Ireland, where he was meeting last week with the the country’s Catholic bishops.

“Pope Francis has been very encouraging, allowing himself to be interviewed by Outreach and sending personal greetings to our conference last year,” Martin added. “Perhaps the most surprising support has been from several bishops who have written for our website, as well as some top-notch Catholic theologians who see the need for serious theological reflection on LGBTQ topics.”

Martin will remain engaged in Outreach’s oversight, holding the title of founder.

The Rev. Brian Paulson, president of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States, evoked both Jesus and the pope when asked why his order had embraced the mission of Outreach.

“Pope Francis has repeatedly called leaders in the Catholic church to emulate the way Jesus spent his ministry on the peripheries, accompanying those who had experienced exclusion,” Paulson said email. “I think the work of Outreach is a response to this invitation.”

Paulson also said he was impressed by Martin’s “grace and patience” in responding to the often harsh criticism directed at him by some conservative Catholics.

There was ample evidence of Outreach’s stature at its conference last June at a branch of Fordham University in New York City. The event was preceded by a handwritten letter of support sent to Martin by Pope Francis, extending “prayers and good wishes” to the participants.

“It’s a special grace for LGBTQ Catholics to know that the pope is praying for them,” Martin said.

Another welcoming letter came from Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York.

“It is the sacred duty of the Church and Her ministers to reach out to those on the periphery,” he wrote to the conference attendees.

The keynote speakers included Fordham’s president, Tania Tetlow, and the closing Mass was celebrated by Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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The Brazilian bishop who took the first step toward the Catholic Church embracing LGBTQ+ people

— The prelate of the diocese of Santo Amaro, in São Paulo, Brazil, submitted the consultation to the Vatican. That inquiry led to the authorization to baptize the LGBTQ+ faithful, who can also be godparents and witnesses to a wedding

Bishop José Negri (left, with miter and crosier) in São Paulo, Brazil on January 24.

By Naiara Galarraga Gortázar

The next lesbian, gay, or transgender person to be the godparent of a baby baptized in a Catholic parish, or in a cathedral, in any corner of the world, may not know what led him or her to assume that crucial responsibility in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church. But the process began in Brazil, in the office of a bishop in São Paulo. Specifically, it started with a letter with six questions addressed to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and signed by Bishop José Negri, of the diocese of Santo Amaro, in the southern part of Latin America’s most populous city. The Holy See received the letter on July 14 and responded almost four months later with a decision signed by Pope Francis. The news was made public at the beginning of November. In summary, trans Catholics can be baptized, but it is not a right and requires avoiding disconcerting believers and public scandal. A same-sex couple’s children can receive the same sacrament as long as there is a well-founded hope that they will be educated in the Catholic faith. They can all serve as witnesses for a wedding.

Bishop Negri raised the six questions clearly and directly. The first question: “Can a trans person be baptized?” The fourth inquiry: “Can a same-sex couple appear as the progenitors of a child to be baptized if he or she was adopted or conceived through other methods, such as surrogacy?” The response from the body that deals with the Church’s doctrinal and theological questions — the former Inquisition — was also concise in its three-page answer, which included multiple footnotes. The Brazilian prelate declined this newspaper’s request to be interviewed about his consultation and its consequences.

The decision on whether LGBTQ+ Catholics can receive some sacraments has caused less of a stir than another of the Pontiff’s rulings (unrelated to Negri)—this one announced in December—which deepens his policy of the institution’s openness. The Vatican approved the blessing of same-sex couples, but, importantly, without equating it to marriage. The decision has even caused a small rebellion on the part of Peru’s clergy.

The diocesan prelate, known here as Dom José, was born in Milan, Italy, as Giuseppe, but he has lived in Brazil since his 20s. He has a degree in Psychology from the Gregorian University in Rome. He has a slight Italian accent, is 64 years old and boasts 132,000 Instagram followers, almost ten times more than the diocese he leads. The publications from the day last November when the Vatican announced its response to his query do not refer to the matter.

But, like Argentina’s Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Negri is in favor of the Catholic hierarchy “listening to the peripheries,” be they urban, social or economic. Previously, he was bishop in Blumenau, in the whitest part of Brazil, a land colonized by German immigrants who preserve the language and even celebrate Oktoberfest. A few years ago, he chaired the Brazilian Episcopal Conference’s child protection committee; at the time, he pledged that the Church would firmly confront the sexual abuse in its midst.

The bishop of Santo Amaro “is on the most conservative spectrum” of the Church in Brazil and “is prudent as a bishop,” explains Paulo Ricardo, of the (Instituto de Estudos da Religião) Institute of Religious Studies. The diocese over which he presides includes some two million Catholics and owes its fame to Father Marcelo Rossi, of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement, which was a true mass phenomenon in the 1990s thanks to his records, a Latin Grammy, show masses and modern methods of evangelization.

The fact that this consultation on LGBTQ+ people reached the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from Brazil is not so surprising if one considers that the South American country is one of the nations where the Catholic Church has more faithful, although the group is dwindling in the face of a strong push by

evangelicals. Same-sex marriage has been legal for over a decade. Fifteen years have passed since the public health system performed the first gender-affirming procedure. And while Brazil is the country where the most trans people are murdered (among those countries that record such crimes), they are also represented in many areas of society and have tremendous visibility. Indeed, there are two trans deputies in Brazil’s national congress and another two in state legislatures.

obispo José Negri
Bishop José Negri (right) last Wednesday.

Luis Rabello, 35, the executive secretary of the Brazilian network of LGBTQ+ Catholic groups, welcomes the changes introduced by Pope Francis because “they serve to give visibility” to a group that “has always existed in the Church, both among the faithful and as catechists.” He is happy that the Vatican has finally adopted norms to resolve issues that until now have been handled on a case-by-case basis. On the phone from Brasilia, he recalls a case from a few years ago: a trans woman who had undergone gender-affirming surgery requested that her dead name — the name on her birth certificate — be replaced by her new one on her baptismal certificate. She got her wish. It happened in Curitiba, a city in southern Brazil.

The representative of LGBTQ+ Catholics in Brazil maintains that Bishop Negri’s questions for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith responds to a social demand. “LGBTQ+ people are demanding more space in the Church; they are demanding respect.” He explains that it is a trend that has grown in recent years with social changes and the LGBTQ+ community’s inspired by the current Pontiff’s gestures. Rabello notes that Pope Francis has received trans people in the Holy See. A civil servant by profession, he believes the recent Vatican rulings are “very important for educating priests, bishops…”

Brazil has about 20 LGBTQ+ Catholic groups spread over 10 states that meet in person, plus virtual ones, including one for non-binary people. A priest from the diocese of Santo Amaro, Father Negri’s diocese, monitors these groups, Rabello says.

Pope Francis has a very special place in the hearts of Brazilian LGBTQ+ Catholics for the answer he gave a Brazilian journalist in 2013 on the return flight from his visit to Brazil. “Francis spoke for the first time about LGBTQ+ people; [he was] the first pope to utter the word gay!” Rabello recalls. It was a revolution in an institution with two millennia of history. That gesture and the ones that followed encouraged the LGBTQ+ faithful to seek more information and to ask their parishes about baptism, marriage and being godparents for baptisms and weddings.

Last October, Bishop Negri spoke a little about his childhood during an interview with another priest — both in collars — during the so-called diocesan youth meeting. He recalled that his grandmother introduced him to the Church and taught him the Rosary (which she recited in Latin). “My ideal was to be an altar boy, but Jesus wanted something else,” he explained. The motto of that youthful encounter sounded provocative: “You seduced me, Lord, and I let myself be seduced.” Bishop Negri took advantage of the occasion to announce that he was organizing a big event “to evangelize en masse, in schools, in subway stations, at bus stops, in universities…”. The battle between Catholics and Evangelicals for the souls of over 200 million Brazilians is intense.

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